Random Thought Thread

Update:

A little while back, there was a discussion about epicondilytis/tennis elbow, and using finger expansion bands to train the extensors to help prevent it.

I mentioned that there were a lot of options on Amazon, but I couldn't recall the brand I liked the best. Well, I finally found them.

FlexEx Hand Exerciser

The reasons I prefer these over every other brand I've tried:
- that 3 pack includes 3 different resistance levels. Yellow = Easy, Red = Medium, Blue = Strong. Then you can double or triple them for even more resistance (so it works well from weak/PT/rehab all the way to strong)

- the range of motion/stretch is excellent. I can just barely palm a basketball, but I can use these looped around my fingers so the loops are right at the edge of the cuticle, and open my hands fully (and it still takes hundreds of reps before they snap). In comparison, lots of the other brands/types won't allow stretching that far before snapping. The material is just a lot stretchier than most other brands (making it way easier to get the loops onto your fingers as well).

*** No idea why they don't show up within the first several pages of results when searching Amazon.
 
vkp78 said:
I like the random number generator method. Gives more time for folks who are busy with work or something else to claim a spot
Click to expand...

I find it favorable as well - though I do understand that it could dampen the enthusiasm for those who have been cultivating their Friday Sale reflexes for awhile now.

Still, with the current state of the forums, it does make sense. It took a full minute and some change for the page to load for me after Nathan opened it.
 
SwarthyGnome said:
I find Bladeforum nearly unusable due to the lag. It really is challenging.
Click to expand...

My business model has been based on posting my work for sale here on Blade Forums which usually requires people to get a membership in order to buy my work. It has been a good model for me in the past and I appreciate this forum. I do worry that it will be challenging to attract more people to come here in order to buy my work when the forum is being frustrating to use. I could see a person who was new here becoming frustrated with it and walking away rather than getting to learn some of the cool things about this place. Forums are becoming a dying breed but I believe that blade forums is a special place in the internet and could be here a long time but we need to deal with some of these lag issues to remain competitive with some of the new places on the internet. I'm sure Spark Spark is working on it.
 
Nathan the Machinist Nathan the Machinist be like...

dealer.jpg
 
The question came up this morning, if Jo’s random numbers could have been predicted.

I was bored, so I wrote up the following. Attention, Geek Alert. But I think it’s a fascinating story .... maybe somebody agrees :)

On predicting modern Random Number Generators:
  • Évariste Galois was a famous mathematician who invented “Galois field theory”. Interesting character, after some incarceration in the Bastille, he died at 21 in a duel for dating the the wrong woman. Google him ....
  • In mathematics, a “field” is a space in which you can move around like you are used to with “normal” numbers, i.e., do addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, there is a Zero, etc.
  • Our “normal” day-to-day numbers are using a base of 10 (i.e., they have “digits”). Galois fields use as base prime numbers.
  • The largest prime numbers known to us are “Mersenne prime numbers” (can be expressed as power(2,n) - 1, e.g., 127 for n=7)
  • The largest Mersenne prime number known to date (“M77232917”) is about 23.2 million digits long.
  • Both modern random number generators and encryption algorithms (used, e.g., when you send an iPhone SMS or log into BF to encrypt your password), use Galois fields with prime number bases as large as possible.
  • To discover a pattern in a random number generator (i.e., to estimate the “entropy”), which is always periodical, you need at least more samples than the generator’s period. The larger the prime number bases of the generator are, the larger the period.
  • There is a group of problems in computer science (“NP-complete”) for which the only algorithmic solution is to try out all possible solutions. Nobody knows a more efficient solution, but we do know that: if anybody ever solves one of these problems more efficiently, (s)he will solve all NP-complete problems more efficiently.
  • (1) Finding the logarithm of a number in a Galois field is based on such a problem. And because it is required to (2) predict a random number generator’s output, or (3) decrypt any modern encrypted message, once anybody figures out how to do either of the 3 without trying all possible output combinations, (s)he will solve the 3 issues in one shot (and hundreds of other NP-complete problems). Many have tried and failed until today.
  • Whoever succeeds will be very famous, able to decrypt the most secret communications, crack passwords, etc., easily.
Cheers,

Roland.
 
ferider said:
The question came up this morning, if Jo’s random numbers could have been predicted.

I was bored, so I wrote up the following. Attention, Geek Alert. But I think it’s a fascinating story .... maybe somebody agrees :)

On predicting modern Random Number Generators:
  • Évariste Galois was a famous mathematician who invented “Galois field theory”. Interesting character, after some incarceration in the Bastille, he died at 21 in a duel for dating the the wrong woman. Google him ....
  • In mathematics, a “field” is a space in which you can move around like you are used to with “normal” numbers, i.e., do addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, there is a Zero, etc.
  • Our “normal” day-to-day numbers are using a base of 10 (i.e., they have “digits”). Galois fields use as base prime numbers.
  • The largest prime numbers known to us are “Mersenne prime numbers” (can be expressed as power(2,n) - 1, e.g., 127 for n=7)
  • The largest Mersenne prime number known to date (“M77232917”) is about 23.2 million digits long.
  • Both modern random number generators and encryption algorithms (used, e.g., when you send an iPhone SMS or log into BF to encrypt your password), use Galois fields with prime number bases as large as possible.
  • To discover a pattern in a random number generator (i.e., to estimate the “entropy”), which is always periodical, you need at least more samples than the generator’s period. The larger the prime number bases of the generator are, the larger the period.
  • There is a group of problems in computer science (“NP-complete”) for which the only algorithmic solution is to try out all possible solutions. Nobody knows a more efficient solution, but we do know that: if anybody ever solves one of these problems more efficiently, (s)he will solve all NP-complete problems more efficiently.
  • (1) Finding the logarithm of a number in a Galois field is based on such a problem. And because it is required to (2) predict a random number generator’s output, or (3) decrypt any modern encrypted message, once anybody figures out how to do either of the 3 without trying all possible output combinations, (s)he will solve the 3 issues in one shot (and hundreds of other NP-complete problems). Many have tried and failed until today.
  • Whoever succeeds will be very famous, able to decrypt the most secret communications, crack passwords, etc., easily.
Cheers,

Roland.
Click to expand...
Is anyone else NP-hard right now?!
 
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